Soloists of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Uchida, QEH | reviews, news & interviews
Soloists of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Uchida, QEH
Soloists of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Uchida, QEH
Masterclass in touch but was the salony Schubert worth the effort?
Monday, 28 March 2011
Mitsuko Uchida: The consummate ringmaster
There is always a moment after you've mauled a musician in review when guilt bubbles to the surface. Your inner nursery school teacher (the little voice that thinks potato prints deserve Nobel Prizes) starts tugging at your conscience. This spell of wussiness is invariably broken by the arrival of someone who shows you just what can be done when care and intelligence are applied to a performance.
That someone was Mitsuko Uchida, who last night shared the stage with soloists of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.
Their quietly sensational performance of Beethoven's Piano Quintet in E flat began sensationally quietly. Woodwind and piano creep in on the silence, intensely soft, cowed, blinking, as if they'd escaped a cave. Broken octaves from Uchida break off this grave comedy. As so often, piano takes the lead in whisking her companions in a new direction. Uchida played the consummate ringmaster to her four woodwind acrobats, feeding them new ideas, opening up new worlds, announcing oncoming storms, encouraging them to peel off into confessional sallies in the Andante cantabile and whipping them back into shape after moments of reverie.
To do all this herding, she deployed an array of dynamic calls. Only when you return to someone like Mitsuko Uchida do you realise how few pianists can really distinguish between their pianos and their fortes. With Uchida, there were 10 gradations to each individual marking. When the full rainbow was applied to a chord, a Piero della Francesca-like perspective was summoned up; finer voicing you will not find anywhere else.
The possibilities of touch were taken to their limits. She was as electrifying in her bold, desiccated thunderclaps of sound (for example, in those comically grouchy final bolts that announce the end of the work) as she was heartbreaking in the tender opening of the Andante. And let no one accuse her of not being bold. She snatched two extraordinary ritardandos (in the first movement and last) from the very edge of preposterousness and nudged them into heaven. Breathtaking stuff.
Her companions were not to be outdone. They may have been playing in her shadow somewhat but they never failed to match her subtlety of phrasing or dynamic control. The unifying theme to their manner was intensity. So concentrated were they all on what the music was saying, so focused in trying to eke out the right tone (oboist Ramón Ortega Quero was especially exquisite, Eric Terwilliger's horn impeccable in his few tricky flourishes), all ego was lost in communal effort. The Berlin Phil could learn a thing or two from this self-effacement.
Effortless musicianship continued into the second-half performance of Schubert's Octet in F, D 803. Cellist Sebastien Klinger's ungainly technique belied the sweetest of tones. First violinist Anton Barachovsky was fearless and crisp whenever fear and limpness could have overcome him. And there was never any concern over the lack of conductor - not always something you can take for granted. In short, here was an impeccable group of musicians delivering an impeccable performance. None of which could hide the elephant in the room. Was this piece really worth the effort? The tormented Schubert we all know and love rears his head but once, in those ominously atmospheric low trills in the final movement. They threaten (but fail) to sweep away the tidy, repetitious salony order of the preceding five movements. And one is left feeling Schubert's Octet is really little more than 19th-century lift music.
Schubert's Octet is really little more than 19th-century lift music
Explore topics
Share this article
Add comment
more Classical music
Bevan, Williams, BBCSO, MacMillan, Barbican review - inspirational journey from darkness to light
UK premiere of 'Fiat Lux' alongside other works evoking transcendence and revelation
First Person: conductor Peter Whelan on coming full circle with the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra
From watching Handel's 'Israel in Egypt' on TV to conducting it
Hughes, SCO, Kuusisto, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh review - Clyne shines, Grime fragments
Playing and programming admirable, but this concert bulged at the seam
Classical CDs: Cigars, cognac and tarantulas
Concertante works for cello and orchestra, plus music for pianos, winds and solo strings
Winterreise, Clayton, Aurora Orchestra, Collon, QEH review - new maps for the great journey
A mighty tenor surmounts obstacles on stage and in score
Esther, London Handel Festival, St George’s Hanover Square review - a lopsided celebratory oratorio
Anniversary acclaim rooted in the honorary Londoner's first concert drama
First Person: Laurence Cummings on his 25th and final year as Musical Director of the London Handel Festival
A blockbuster month begins tomorrow, mixing starry casts with new talent
Theresienstadt-Terezin 1941-1945, Nash Ensemble, Wigmore Hall review - memorial music of stunning impact
Masterpieces from composers murdered by the Nazis in a rich day of offerings
Osborne, BBC Philharmonic, Bihlmaier, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - an orchestra at the top of its game
Another Bruckner symphony for the 200th anniversary year
Scottish Ensemble, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall New Auditorium review - making a move
Music and motion combine for an engaging performance
Morison, Big Noise Wester Hailes, RSNO, Søndergård, Usher Hall, Edinburgh - shimmering delicacy and surging swell
Fine Impressionism from resident orchestra, but young players bring the broadest smiles
Murray, Vlaams Radiokor, LPO, Gardner, RFH review - visual ‘interpretation’ blunts sonic brilliance in Szymanowski rarity
Sterling work from conductor and orchestra couldn’t save an incoherent evening
Comments
...
...
...